Business journalist and columnist Jens Tschebull died yesterday at the age of 92. This was announced by his family to the APA. Born in Klagenfurt, he worked as editor-in-chief for “profil” and “trend”. He worked as an editor for the “Wirtschaftsblatt”. He became known to a wide audience as the host of many editions of the legendary discussion program “Club 2”.
Tschebull studied journalism and initially worked for the “Kurier” at the end of the 1960s. He soon switched to the magazine business. Oscar Bronner brought him to the newly founded business magazine “trend”, where he worked as editor-in-chief from 1969 to 1975. During this time he also worked for a year as the first editor-in-chief of the news magazine “profil”, which Bronner also founded.
“Jens Tschebull was very important because he got some young journalists who wanted to improve the world to do more research than work to change the world,” Bronner recalled in an interview. The former ORF general director Gerd Bacher once remarked that under Tschebull at the helm, outstanding journalists “not only made business legible and understandable, but even exciting”.
“Good Dictator”
From 1975, Tschebull worked as a freelance journalist and columnist, and in the 1990s he was still the editor of the daily newspaper “Wirtschaftsblatt”. In an interview with the now-defunct newspaper, he recalled that he was about to retire when he was asked if he would like to help out. “Originally I was only supposed to stay for one year, it turned out to be nine,” says the journalist. He always told the staff that “they shouldn’t save the world with their journalistic work, but the publisher”. He also noted: “I was a dictator. But a good one.” The fact that the “Wirtschaftsblatt” was ultimately discontinued did not make him sad. “That’s the way of life. The journalists are now fertilizer for the market.”
After working for the “Wirtschaftsblatt” he retired, but continued to write guest commentaries into old age – for example for the “Presse” and the “Wiener Zeitung”.
